The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development has a simple answer for why it is selling Nation Media Group, East Africa’s largest media company: NMG is the only media business it owns anywhere in the world, and media is not one of its core sectors. Following a portfolio review, AKFED says it will focus on financial services, industrials, infrastructure, and hospitality. Everything else is, by that logic, peripheral. AKFED insists that the sale is a strategic repositioning, not a loss of confidence in NMG or the broader regional media market.
The argument is coherent enough on its own terms. AKFED operates more than 70 companies, employing over 75,000 people across 15 countries. In East Africa alone, its portfolio includes Diamond Trust Bank, Jubilee Insurance, Serena Hotels, Farmers Choice, and the Bujagali Energy dam, among others, all squarely within those four designated sectors. Against that portfolio, a media group, however influential, is an outlier.
The fund announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to sell its 100 per cent shareholding in NPRT Holdings Africa Limited — a special-purpose vehicle holding a 54.08 per cent stake in NMG, comprising 92.6 million ordinary shares — to Taarifa Ltd, a Mauritius-registered company owned by Tanzanian businessman Rostam Azizi. No sale price was disclosed, as applicable regulations do not require it. The deal is expected to close within three to four months, pending regulatory approvals in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda, bringing to a close a 66-year association that began before Kenyan independence.
The fund was equally firm in rejecting two other explanations that were bound to emerge: that the sale reflects a loss of confidence in NMG, and that it was driven by political pressure. “This is a commercial transaction between private parties,” it said, adding that proceeds would be reinvested in other economic development initiatives within the AKFED umbrella. It has also confirmed there are no further divestments planned.
A deteriorating bottom line
Those assurances, however credible in isolation, sit alongside a business that has been under sustained financial pressure. NMG posted record net income in 2013; by 2023 and 2024, it had recorded back-to-back net losses. That trajectory is not unique to NMG — traditional media companies worldwide have struggled to replace print advertising revenue as audiences migrate online — but it is a difficult backdrop against which to argue that the timing of the exit is purely coincidental.
| Financial Performance: Nation Media Group PLC (2013–2024) | ||
| Financial year | Turnover (KShs bn) | Profit/(-Loss) after tax (KShs mn) |
| 2024 | 6.2 | -254.4 |
| 2023 | 7.1 | -205.7 |
| 2022 | 7.3 | 318.5 |
| 2021 | 7.6 | 493.1 |
| 2020 | 6.8 | 47.9 |
| 2019 | 9.1 | 856 |
| 2018 | 9.7 | 1,117.5 |
| 2017 | 10.7 | 1,348 |
| 2016 | 11.3 | 1,685 |
| 2015 | 12.3 | 2,223 |
| 2014 | 13.4 | 2,476 |
| 2013 | 13.4 | 2,729 |
NMG’s digital audience has grown substantially, reaching 62 million users by 2024. Whether that reach translates into revenue at the pace required to replace legacy income streams remains the central commercial question facing its incoming owner.
The buyer: a familiar face in East African media
Rostam Azizi is less well known outside Tanzania than his new acquisition, but he is not a newcomer to the industry. An economist and entrepreneur with interests in mining, telecommunications, agriculture, real estate, energy, and construction, he has direct experience of the East African media market.
Between 2000 and 2006, Mr Azizi was a co-founder and shareholder of Mwananchi Communications Limited, where he helped establish the Mwananchi, The Citizen, and Mwanaspoti newspapers, titles that NMG itself subsequently acquired. Mr Azizi later acquired New Habari Limited in 2006 and was a principal investor in Africa Media Group between 2005 and 2019, building a broadcast portfolio that included Channel Ten, DTV, CTN, Classic FM, and Magic FM. He currently holds interests in Habari Corporation Limited, a Tanzanian media company.
The breadth of his prior media interests, and the fact that some of them fed directly into what NMG later became, suggests a buyer who understands the asset, even if the scale of NMG represents a significant change from anything he has previously owned. Mr Azizi has pledged to uphold NMG’s editorial independence and to invest in its digital development. “NMG is an institution of profound importance to East Africa,” he said in a statement, “and we will uphold its editorial independence while investing in its continued success.”
Continuity assured for shareholders, for now
The transaction is structured as a sale of NPRT Holdings, the SPV that holds the NMG stake, rather than a direct sale of NMG shares on the open market. AKFED says this is standard practice for transactions of this nature and provides a cleaner transfer mechanism; it also means the sale does not directly affect NMG’s market valuation or trigger an automatic obligation to buy out minority shareholders.
Taarifa has confirmed it has no intention of making a mandatory or voluntary offer for the remaining NMG shares and has no plans to delist the company from any of the four exchanges on which it trades: the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the Uganda Securities Exchange, the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, and the Rwanda Stock Exchange. Minority shareholders — the second-largest of whom is Alpine Investments Limited with a 12.29 per cent stake — will retain their rights and will be able to continue trading their shares as normal.
The Capital Markets Authority of Kenya, along with its counterparts in Tanzania and Uganda, will be asked to grant Taarifa an exemption from the obligation to make a mandatory takeover offer, a standard request in transactions structured through holding companies where beneficial control is simply transferring from one private party to another. COMESA and EAC competition authorities, as well as communications regulators in all four countries, must also approve the deal before it can close.
On Wednesday, NMG’s board issued a cautionary announcement to shareholders confirming it had been served a formal notice of intention by Taarifa, and advising investors to seek professional guidance when dealing in the company’s shares pending the completion of regulatory approvals.
Employees
The transaction is a change of majority shareholder, not a restructuring of the business, and AKFED has said it will not affect NMG’s employment arrangements. No redundancies are anticipated as a direct result of the ownership change.
At board level, two AKFED-affiliated directors — Sultan Ali Allana and Fayyaz Nurmohamed — will step down upon completion of the transaction. Taarifa may nominate replacements in accordance with NMG’s standard nominations and election process. Future decisions on management and broader operational direction will be made by the new majority shareholder and the NMG board.
The shadow of a succession
It is difficult to discuss the sale without reference to the death of Shah Karim al-Husseini, also known as Aga Khan IV, in February 2025. It was he who, two years after inheriting the title in 1957, founded the company that would become NMG and acquired its first title, the Kiswahili-language weekly Taifa Leo. A year later came the Nation titles; in 1973, NMG listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange; and through the 1990s and 2000s, it expanded into broadcast media and across the region.
The late Aga Khan’s relationship with NMG was, in many respects, personal. Despite the commercial logic that might have favoured a more accommodating editorial stance — regional governments, including Uganda’s, have periodically withheld advertising from NMG titles as punishment for critical coverage, closed them down, and arrested journalists — the titles remained notably forthright. Whether that reflected a business calculation that editorial independence drives readership, or something more personal to the man who built the organisation, is a matter of interpretation.
What is less contested is that the current Aga Khan, Shah Rahim al-Husseini, did not build the media group and is under no obvious obligation to maintain it as a strategic priority.
The AKFED statement is silent on the succession question. But the timing — a portfolio review that concluded in favour of exit within a year of the previous Aga Khan’s death — is striking enough that the question will be asked regardless.
NMG, for its part, remains the most influential media organisation in East Africa, with more than 30 brands, over a thousand staff, and operations spanning four countries. Its new owner has given no indication that he wishes to change that. Whether the markets, and the region’s governments, take him at his word will become clearer once the regulatory process runs its course.
